And Still We Rise: The Trials and Triumphs of Twelve Gifted Inner-City High School Students

Olivia works in the club where she was a taxi dancer, mainly on the weekends so she can get her work done. Because she can’t get any work done at home, she goes to a nearby Taco Bell and studies there, as winos walk in and out. She has had many items stolen from her at her home, and she sleeps clutching her purse. She refuses to sell her car, and she decides to enroll in an automotive mechanics class as the only girl. As the students are working on a problem that Olivia solves quickly, her teacher hoists her car up and looks at its brakes.

As the teacher is attending to Olivia’s car—and Olivia is standing nearby dressed out of dress code in heels and a short skirt—rocks fly and hit several cars in the parking lot. The teacher thinks students are throwing rocks at the car from another building, and as he calls security, a six-foot-six student goofs around. The teacher tells the security guard to remove this student. Students throw objects around the class before the teacher throws a woodblock and they quiet down. Olivia and Corwin leave to grab a donut, and Olivia says grace before eating.

The next day, students in Little’s AP class read The Crucible out loud with great flair. Two of the boys are so into the play that they called Little to speak about it the night before. Little speaks about McCarthyism and anti-communist hysteria during the 1950s, and she asks the class what the greatest threat to national security is today.

A small, slender girl named Venola comes up to Little and hands her a note expressing disappointment that Little did not call on her; she was sitting in the back, and Little did not see her hand up. Little gives Venola the floor and sits in Venola’s seat. Venola says that she believes in God but not in deceivers and that people should make their own decisions, or they will wind up with situations like McCarthyism.

Venola left Louisville, Kentucky, with her mother, Paula, and two siblings when she was nine because her father would not help support the family. They hopped on a Greyhound to LA and found a boarding house in South-Central where the gas, electricity, and water were shut off from an earlier nonpayment. Paula worked as a dishwasher/waitress and could not afford to move, so she gathered wood from the neighborhood and cooked for her children in a hibachi. Paula also made them a fire in the fireplace and busily attended to cooking, cleaning, and escorting her children to and from school. Venola excelled at school and was disappointed if she earned a “B.”

Paula was able to move her family into a two-bedroom apartment, which seemed luxurious to them, and she worked two jobs—as a nursing assistant during the day and at a convalescent hospital at night. She handed her money to Venola, who paid the bills and told the family when they couldn’t spend any money. Paula does not have time to get involved in Venola’s schoolwork, but she is very proud of her daughter.

Paula has tried to support her family without public assistance. She moved her family into a three-bedroom apartment, but it was dark and dank. With the help of a Section 8 federal housing subsidy, she moved her family into a small house. Pictures of Jesus fill the small bungalow.

During Venola’s senior year, she receives pamphlets from colleges after scoring well on the PSAT. She knows that she will have to go where she receives the most money. After school, she has to work as a nurse’s aide at the convalescent home where her mother works, starting at three o’clock in the afternoon and ending at nine o’clock in the evening. She tries to do her homework before falling asleep and tries to read in her free time. Wherever she moved, Paula walked Venola to the neighborhood library and got her a library card. With a goal of reading 20 books this year, she has already read 14 by mid-September, most by popular black authors. Unlike other students at Crenshaw who can be devious, Venola is genuinely interested in what she is learning and is a favorite of her teachers. For example, she tries to help Olivia when Olivia misses classes. She is a favorite among the patients in the convalescent home because she takes time to listen to people, and she uses her lunch and nutrition periods to do homework rather than hang out with other students.

While Braxton appreciates students like Venola who are self-sufficient, he spends his time trying to find childcare for Toya and finally finds an affordable place near school. Toya, however, does not think she can afford the place when Braxton tries to get her to return to school before the end of September.

Toya lives in a rundown one-bedroom apartment with her cousin in a blighted section of Watts. After liking the name Kato Kaelin during the O. J. Simpson trial, she named her son Kaelen. While taking good care of her son, she reads the dictionary and goes to the library. She will try to scrape together the extra money she needs before time runs out for her to return to school. 

After school one day, members of one gang stab and beat another student near the front steps, and then a former student is shot by a rival gang. Noble is afraid that the gang violence might spill over onto the campus. She sends a memo detailing the two incidents and another in which a teacher confiscated a student’s pager and was attacked.

Little incorporates the gang events in her class discussion of The Crucible. The class moves into a discussion about lies, and students talk about the infractions they have committed. After a girl comments that Jesus will forgive them, Little loses her temper. She rants about how people forgave O. J. for killing his wife, and she shouts, “WE’RE TALKING ABOUT THE TRUTH” (76). She tells her students that she is teaching them literature as a way to respect all human life. The class enters a discussion about the authority in their lives, and a student named Miesha says the authority in her life is her brother.

When Miesha was four and her brother, Raymond, was 15, he started taking care of her. Her mother worked as a bus driver in LA, and her father was in Texas. Raymond prepared Miesha’s breakfast and dinner and even rewarded her with dinner out when she received good grades. He met with the teachers when she was too “mouthy” (78) at school. When she rebelled during her last year of elementary school, she moved to Texas to live with her father and stepmother while Raymond moved out and became a security guard. She returned to LA, and Raymond again became her surrogate parent. Though Raymond was smart, he had not worked hard, and he wanted his sister to avoid his mistakes.

Little taught Miesha in 10th grade, and she did not like the girl’s belligerent attitude. When she told Miesha’s mother that Miesha would have to transfer classes, Miesha cried and dedicated herself to her work. By junior year, her mother’s financial problems caused Miesha to need to work 40 to 50 hours a week as a sales clerk and waitress. Miesha wrote in an essay, “I believe that my talent is perseverance” (80). She still earned a 3.9 that year and is in contention to become class valedictorian her senior year. She is still working as a sales clerk, and Raymond has encouraged her to be a cheerleader and works with her on routines.

Little interrupts the class to yell at the gardener in the quad to tell him to stop mowing, and she then goes on a tirade about how she doesn’t have any money from the school for copies and textbooks. She then gets the class into a discussion of federal programs, which they know more about than she does.

Little constantly goes on the offensive against Moultrie. Little and Moultrie are the only English teachers in the gifted program. Little teaches the students during 10th grade and senior year, and Moultrie teaches the students during ninth and 11th grades. Their teaching styles are completely different, and they, though both 41, are completely different. While Little lives with her three dogs, Moultrie has five children. Little lives on the Westside, while Moultrie lives near the school. Little is aloof, while Moultrie is nurturing. While Little mainly teaches works by dead white men and some women, Moultrie reads some classics along with works by black authors. Moultrie considers her teaching “a calling from God” (85) and says “I want to touch lives” (85). She believes that part of her mission is to help the students take pride in their culture by exposing them to African American writers.

Moultrie tells students to address adults properly. She and her husband own the largest black-owned party company in southern California, and she tells her students that they will not hire people who do not address them properly. In discussing the end of affirmative action that is likely going to pass with Proposition 209, she stresses the importance of good manners, such as making eye contact and speaking properly during a college interview. She alternates between the precise language of an English teacher, the swaying words of a preacher, and the vernacular. She tells her class that they will read works like Native Son, Jubilee, and Othello.

In introducing The Scarlet Letter, Moultrie speaks about Columbus and how he stole everything from Native Americans, and she moves on to talk about a student she taught named James Avery who was friends with people in a gang and got shot. She tells the students to be careful about choosing their friends and asks the students for an “Amen” in response: “‘[T]his is Mama Moultrie talkin’” (90). She reads out loud from The Scarlet Letter, punctuating her lesson with asides and reminders to pay attention to Hawthorne’s language and imagery.

In addition to teaching and running the English department, Moultrie runs a business with her husband. She and her husband have five children and many pets, and they live with her mother-in-law. Moultrie also runs a Bible study group. She is very organized and expects the same of her students=. She begins most classes with a writing assignment, often on a topic related to the community. Moultrie has many assignments and calls parents if students don’t hand them in, while Little’s class has only a few essays and exams. Little dislikes Moultrie’s assignments, as she feels Moultrie has not given the students training in the structure of writing an essay.

Braxton fears that he will have to get involved in the battle between Little and Moultrie. Little used to teach three years of classes. When Moultrie took over the 11th grade, Little regarded her as an interloper. No students at Crenshaw had passed the AP English exam before Little arrived, but though she had been successful at getting students to pass, the pass rate had started to slip. Little blamed Moultrie for this result, and Moultrie was resistant to Little’s help with her teaching. This is another source of tension for Braxton, who has an infant, small child, and 90-minute commute to and from work each day.